But the overwhelming characteristic of it is the disturbing nature of what is represented on film.

Indeed, American Psycho suspends disbelief (the jokes not withstanding) to inflict psychological terror on those who see this film.

Some viewers may not seem to be bothered.

They are either masochists.

Or they lack imagination.

But let me tell you my own frame of reference: pizzagate.

Go ahead. Look it up.

It is going viral on several media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube.

And it is just what I was talking about prior to the U.S. election.

Pizzagate is the theory that John and Tony Podesta, along with James Alefantis and his Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., are involved in a kidnapping and child trafficking ring for pedophiles who rape and then murder their young victims.

Another pizzeria ostensibly used for ritualistic sex murders might be the neighboring Besta Pizza (besta, as in beast).

There is an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence which points to the above being true.

But I cannot outline the entire conspiracy here.

Suffice it to say that dead babies, dead children, dead teenagers were potentially the fruits of these incredibly strange and evil proceedings.

As I have mentioned in the past, the organization through which this pedo ring is likely being run is the Clinton Foundation.

There are further revelations which seem to tie Department of Justice employees Andrew Kline and Arun Rao to this Satanic pedo ring.

Mr. Kline owns Besta Pizza.

[Update 12/16/16: The ownership of Besta Pizza is in question. There seems to be two Andrew Klines at issue. Further, it appears that other persons may share ownership in this establishment.]

Mr. Alefantis was lovers with David Brock of Correct the Record and Media Matters.

And that’s where George Soros comes in.

Soros has given five-figure donations to Comet Ping Pong on multiple occasions.

And we can’t forget Jeffrey Epstein who used his plane (the Lolita Express) to make jaunts to his own private sex slave island in the Caribbean (I belive it’s in the Virgin Islands).

I started writing about TV ostensibly as reportage on this medium relative to cinema.

With this particular episode of Saturday Night Live, the two converge in a unique way.

The host is Anthony Perkins.

Cinephiles will probably know him as Norman Bates from Hitchcock’s indispensable Psycho (1960).

Really, this is a remarkable installment of SNL.

Perkins actually delivers a sort of anti-monologue.

In another unnamed scene, he acts as a psychologist who relies on the power of show tunes (specifically “Hello, Dolly!”) to cure a hopeless case (Jane Curtin).

Perkins is magnificent throughout this odd marriage of the disposable and the timeless.

But we must also mention Chevy Chase.

By this time, Chase was becoming the star of the show.

I almost feel bad for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd (not to mention all the other talented players), but Chase lived up to the opportunity.

What is apparent in this particular show is that Chevy Chase was/is as talented an actor as Anthony Perkins.

I know that statement reeks of provocateuring, but I believe it to be true in several ways.

Namely, Chase was able to keep a straight face during some hilarious bits. Put another way, it’s hard to be serious while evoking laughter.

We see Perkins have more trouble with it. It’s not easy. And so Chevy Chase has probably been unjustly maligned as a mediocre actor when the opposite is true.

Witness, for instance, the opening sequence of this March 13th airing. It is highly-intelligent humor. I could see Samuel Beckett getting a kick out of it.

And so the writers would get credit. Yes, it is a brilliant concept. The show had been toying with more-and-more self-referential humor. Not to give too much away, but the first skit is the equivalent of writing music ABOUT MUSIC!

I’ve done it. Truly, it takes a damaged soul to end up at such a twisted place.

And so thank God for Saturday Night Live…these outcasts and miscreants who gave the world a laugh starting in 1975.

They were always surprising. That’s the key. Even with the trademark “fall” at the beginning of the show. Something in each episode is astounding. Cutting-edge. Leading-edge. Bleeding-edge.

This show is no different. What a masterstroke to pair Anthony Perkins with Betty Carter.

At first, I was thinking Betty Davis. I mean, come on: this was 1976!

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Betty Carter is magical here (particularly on her first number).

I’ve never been into jazz vocalists. I know the big names. Ella Fitzgerald. Sarah Vaughan.

They never did anything for me.

I hate to admit that.

I can listen to instrumental jazz all day. It is divine!

Indeed, the only jazz vocalist who mattered to me was Billie Holiday. Particularly her last album Lady in Satin.

But Betty Carter is something different.

It’s real. Bebop VOCALS. Not a bunch of showoff scat singing.

Betty Carter sang like a horn player.

Saxophone…Coltrane.

When she locked down on a note she held it…like it was keyed in her blood.

What breath control!

It’s real stuff.

If you want to hear a little bit of New York in the 70s, here’s a bit of jazz to do any place proud.

Carter was from Flint, Michigan, but she sounds right at home broadcasting from the biggest stage in the world.

But the mark of the genius filmmaker may be found in their method of narrative. The art of how they tell their stories.

To be quite honest, I wasn’t thrilled to return to this Fritz Lang masterpiece, but I’m glad I did.

It is very much how I feel about Hitchcock’s Psycho. It is a wonderful film, but it’s not something I want to throw on once a week during the course of kicking back.

M, like Psycho, is a supremely tense film. Nowadays, when we think of Hitchcock, we might reflect on his tastefulness. Think about it (says Jerry Lee). In Hitchcock’s day (a long, productive “day”), things which are now shown with impunity were positively disallowed for a Hollywood filmmaker. Blood and guts…no. Hitchcock was forced to artfully suggest.

The strictures guiding Fritz Lang (29 years earlier) were even more conservative. But even so, M is a genuinely terrifying movie.

Terrifying films are rarely relaxing. They are not meant to be.

But as I had seen this one before, I was able to focus more on the method employed by Lang. The truth is, M is a masterpiece. It really is the treatment of a brute subject (murder) with incredible subtlety.

What is most radical about M is its counterintuitive take on crime.

Within this film, crime is divided into capital and noncapital offenses.

In M, a band of criminals exists which seeks to put a serial killer out of business. It may seem a strange turn of phrase, but this killer is bad for the business of other criminals (mainly thieves and such).

A town in terrorized. The police regularly raid establishments. You must have your “papers” with you at all times.

And so those who survive on crime are so desperate as to adopt (temporarily) the same goal as the police: catch the killer.

It is not giving much away to tell you that Peter Lorre is the killer. This is not a whodunit. It’s a “what’s gonna happen”. That I will leave to your viewing pleasure.

While I am on the subject of Lorre, let me just say that this is one of the finest, weirdest performances in cinema history. The final scene is one of absolutely raw nerves. Lorre is not the cute, vaguely-foreign character he would become in The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca. Lorre is stark-raving mad.

His attacks of psychosis are chilling to observe. But really, it is his final outburst which tops any bit of lunacy I’ve ever seen filmed.

Today there would likely be plenty of actors ready to play such a macabre role, but in 1931 this was a potential death wish.

That Lorre put his soul into it tells us something important about him. First, he was capable of being more than a “sidekick” (as he was in the previously-mentioned Bogart films). Second, he was dedicated to the art of acting. Lorre was not “mailing it in”. Playing such a role can’t be particularly healthy for one’s mental state.

But there’s a further thing. His final monologue is filled with such angst. Let us consider the year: 1931. In the midst of the Great Depression.

But also we must consider the country: Germany. These were the waning years of the Weimar Republic. Three important dates would end this democratic republic: Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor (Jan. 30, 1933), 9/11 the Reichstag fire (Feb. 27, 1933), and the Enabling Act (Mar. 23, 1933).

The era of M (1931) was the era of Heinrich Brüning’s “deflationary” monetary policy as German Chancellor. I put deflationary in quotation marks because Wikipedia’s current description might better be termed contractionary monetary policy.

As Wikipedia would tell it, Brüning was essentially instating fiscal austerity (that hot-button term of recent times) concomitantly with the aforementioned monetary approach. This was, of course, the failure which paved the way for Adolf Hitler to take control of Germany.

And so we find that the historian Webster Tarpley is right when he refers to certain modern-day policy makers as austerity “ghouls”. Either conservative/fascist leaders across the globe have no grasp of history, or they are looking forward with anticipation to the next Hitler or Mussolini.

It should be noted that Tarpley is coming from a socialist perspective rooted in the Democratic Party of FDR. His opposition, therefore, would likely brand him as liberal/communist and through slippery-slope logic see the policies he espouses as paving the way for the next Stalin or Mao.

And so goes the political circus…ad nauseam.

Returning to film, we must at least consider this situation in Germany. The country was still paying war reparations from WWI (though this was becoming impossible because of the internal economic woes).

What is perhaps most astonishing is how much Peter Lorre’s character prefigures the Hitler caricature which has come down to us from history.

War-based societies have a compulsion to kill. Germany found out the hard way that this is not a healthy default. Sadly, today’s Germany has not checked the most warmongering modern country on Earth (the United States) enough to make any difference.

The United States has, for a long time now, been breathing…seething for a war. The “masters of war” are all wearing suits. Only suits want to go to war. A true warrior does not want war. Only those who will go unscathed actively invite war.

But there is an insanity in suits. A compulsion. Don’t let the suit fool you. A suit is, for us grown-ups, the equivalent of a piece of candy…or an apple…or a balloon for a child. A suit advocating war is saying, “Keep your eyes on my suit. I know best. Trust in me. Look at my impressive degree.”

The suits like places such as Raven Rock Mountain. The suits won’t be on the battlefield. And don’t let the 10% who actually fought in a war fool you: they were in non-combat operations. Their daddies made sure of it.

So keep your eyes open for the M of American cinema. Who is the next fascist to take the stage? Hitler had a Charlie Chaplin moustache. How dangerous could he be? Trump has a ginger comb-over. Surely he’s harmless, right?

What is romance nowadays? Is it a glossy paperback with dog-eared corners? Is there a mane of red hair? A swelling bosom?

Or is romance chivalry?

After you. Je vous en prie.

No.

Romance has not survived.

Who are we kidding?

For romance to have survived, love would also have had to survive.

But wait…

I see…here and there. Is that not love?

Ah…romantic love. A different thing.

I assure you, dear reader, if you have made it this far into my ridiculous litany of theses that you shall be rewarded for your efforts.

What we have here is the final film by the great Max Ophüls.

I have heard this picture described as a flawed masterpiece.

Pay no mind to such estimations.

This is the product of a genius spilling his guts onto the celluloid canvas.

Film. Celluloid. When did it start? When did it end?

Once upon a time, film was flammable.

And our film is certainly flammable.

Martine Carol, who plays Lola Montès, is one of a kind.

This particular performance…I must admit, this is one of my favorite films…such a powerful experience.

But Carol is not alone on the grand stage. No… This production would not be the breathtaking spectacle it is without the incomparable Peter Ustinov.

Ustinov is the ringmaster. As in circus.

The important point to note is that Ophüls made a psychological metaphor of the circus…and created a film which is probably the longest extended metaphor ever captured by motion picture cameras.

But it is not a typical circus.

It is a nightmare circus. A cusp-of-dream circus.

Every shot is effused with symbolism.

The little people…haunting Oompa Loompas…little firemen from a Fahrenheit 451 yet to be filmed. Bradbury had published in 1953. But it would necessitate Truffaut in 1966 to make the thing so eerie. It is that specific vision…the firemen on their futuristic trucks…which Lola Montès prefigures. The little people. From Freaks by Tod Browning through Lola Montès to the cinematography of Nicolas Roeg. And the tension of Bernard Herrmann. From Psycho to Fahrenheit 451. And even Oskar Werner (who plays a sizable role in Lola Montès). From here to Truffaut.

But the nightmares are only horrible because her life was so vivid…Lola Montès. First with Franz Liszt. And then with mentions of Chopin and Wagner. Even Mozart…

This was romance. A different time.

What love would sustain a warrior in battle?

Simple love. Honest love.

And yet, what love drives a man to the edge?

Romantic love. The femme fatale. Why is it that we never hear of the homme fatal?

All kidding aside, I want to make a very serious point about Lola Montès. It is my belief that this film represents an admirably feminist perspective the intensity of which I have seen nowhere else than in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile).

For 1955, Lola Montès was a harrowing epic. Because Max Ophüls was a true auteur, it has lost none of its wonder…even in our loveless, edgy world.